Welcome to Marlinspike Hall, ancestral home of the Haddock Clan, the creation of Belgian cartoonist Hergé.
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Monday, April 5, 2010

How to Gift the Gifter?

I love getting gifts. I love giving them even more, and will vex myself no end in the effort to find the right ones.

The process became difficult when a whole bunch o' family was added to my gift-giving list of birthdays and celebrations.

If you are estranged from your family and considering some form of reconciliation? Think carefully about how that sea change will impact your listmaking and shopping; Consider, too, the emotional impact should you end up buying a mess o'gift cards for your new bunch o'family.

(You will be further devastated to discover that these creatures wouldn't recognize a "thank you" card or note if it bit them on their rounded derrières.)

This confession will have been worthwhile if just one person is helped by my sad blathering example.

1 comment:

This past year I have started making on my computer music mixes tailored to the recipient.They take a long time, but I love making them--choosing the songs and what order they go best in--and people have liked getting them, or so they say. And they're cheap, or they can be, if you have CDs you can load onto your computer, though I did end up buying a lot of individual songs to fill in gaps.

I noticed your brother had sent you music that was important to him, so maybe he would like a mix of the songs of your life... starting, of course, with the Jewel Song from Faust!

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

I am a retired French prof -- retired due to disablity, not age, and certainly not by choice. Teaching was my raison d'être. My world becomes more confined and defined with each passing day.

I hope that this blog, by its general silliness, alone, will prove a defense against the painful pressure of such implosions.

My interests are legion, but ultimately ego-driven, as will soon be embarrassingly evident. One of the more arcane? A love for the works of Georges Prosper Remi -- best known as Hergé. If you've forgotten the gist of Hergé's work, HERE is a list of characters and adventures to consult. How we wish, sometimes, that we had been in Hergé's Head (la Tête de Hergé), back in the heyday of Tintin, Snowy, Professor Calculus, Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond), and all the gang.

Still, it is a childhood dream come true to be living in Captain Haddock's ancestral manor, Marlinspike Hall, with my partner Fred, La Bonne et Belle Operatic Diva, Bianca Castafiore, our pets, and a devoted Domestic Staff. Bianca and I can be so much alike, at times, in ways both endearing and alienating, that you'll wonder "Who is whom?" While she has titular control of elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle, I do most of the writing. If you would like to locate us on a map, it's easy: we are about a two hour drive west of the Lone Alp. Or you can use MapQuest.

Of course, even as the Milanese Nightingale regales us with longwinded tales of escapes from General Tapioca and poorly prepared pasta, saved by her beloved Captain and Tintin, even as she serenades us with that interminable Air des bijoux -- the threat of eviction looms over our heads, for we are neither manor born nor manor bred.

To stay in Captain Haddock's good graces and earn our keep, we strive to keep The Manor in tiptop shape, to keep the adventures to a minimum, and to be good neighbors to The Cistercians living just down the road, here in beautiful, magical Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs). You never know when The Captain might suddenly return from some mysterious nautical journey! The Castafiore trills merely at the thought; Fred, on the other hand, worries about the algae outbreak in the Moat, where our benefactor moors his mini-submarine fleet.

En tout cas...

Let me explain, at least, my blog title, Dear Reader:

Some years back, one early morning in Paris, bleary-eyed from a long flight, with hours yet to wait before I could check-in to my hotel (and perilously little money in my pocket), I stood perched against a stone wall overlooking the Seine.